How to Learn, How to Labor, How to Live - Over 170 Years of Character-building at Carson Long

The hallways are dark, and though all the doors are closed, here and there you can hear a muffled snore. Light shines through at the bottom of a couple of doors, but by and large, it's a peaceful sleeping dormitory hallway.

An alarm rings, softly but insistently, and a sliver of light suddenly peers out from beneath another doorway. Within a minute it opens, and a young man clad in pajama bottoms emerges and starts making his rounds. His name is Chris, but that's not a fact that everyone knows -- even his roommate calls him by his last name. Chris' job early this morning is "CQ" -- Charge of Quarters. He will knock on every door, open it and poke his head inside, and announce the time -- "6:30." Reveille isn't until 6:40, but most of the boys appreciate the ten-minute warning even if all they do with it is lie in bed awaiting the shrill bell that announces the start of another day at Carson Long.

I was thirteen when I started my Carson Long experience. I took an overstuffed duffel bag and a Boy Scout backpack to Penn Station in Manhattan and caught a train with a couple of dozen other boys. We occupied the Carson Long car, an accommodation the train line made for us on our travel days. After a trip of several hours, the train stopped along a lonely-looking stretch of track in Newport, Pennsylvania and we boys descended, small and forlorn alongside the enormous train, and under the supervision of an older boy who had taken charge, we made our way down the embankment to a waiting bus.

We climbed down the steep steps from the train and stood peering about at the September sunshine that early afternoon. A few of us wore uniforms, but most were in "civvies," as we quickly learned to call them. Civvies weren't the mark of a new cadet, though. We quickly learned that whenever possible, most "old boys" would wear them instead of their uniforms. One of the boys in uniform was waiting with the bus, and he took charge. He had a roster and called off names, and most of the boys on the roster were on the bus. He took another look up the embankment to make sure we weren't leaving any stragglers behind, and then off we rode on the six-mile trip to New Bloomfield, home of Carson Long.

I'm sure that every school has similar opening days. New students must quickly be oriented and acclimated to the schedules and routines and the very culture of their new home. At Carson Long, we also had to be issued uniforms -- the old boys seemed to be determined that we all look alike as quickly as possible. The process included a walk downtown -- we weren't quite at the marching stage yet -- for shoes and haircuts. The shoes were all identical, naturally, something called a black navy oxford. The haircuts, surprisingly, weren't uniform -- boys had a choice of styles, but the choice was limited, because our hair couldn't be more than two inches long. Unlike the new cadets at the service academies, though, or the draftees entering the military, we weren't routinely given buzz cuts or "Kojaks." Some of us were still able to comb our hair after our official haircuts.

Once back in the dorm, we had the first of interminable lineups, during which the old boys would acquaint us with the routines and culture of the school and of the expectations we had to live up to. These orientations usually were delivered at the top of the cadet's voice, and were well-laced with adolescent attempts at military-style profanity. We learned that in the inevitable hierarchy of life, from the Carson Long perspective, we new boys, regardless of age, wealth, academic qualifications or whatever other standard of achievement or endowment you might consider significant, were absolutely the lowest form of life on earth, and we ranked below some inanimate objects as well -- doorknobs and hammers (by the sack) were brighter than we were, for example. At the first of these lineups, we learned how to "brace" -- an exaggerated form of attention with the chest thrust out, the back straight, and with the chin drawn tightly in to the chest. We learned that West Point new boys were required to stand this way at all formations, but it turned out that we would only be required to brace when we were in trouble.

Cadets earned rank as well and filled the positions of responsibility in the battalion of 200 or so boys in the school -- battalion commander and adjutant, three company commanders, two platoon leaders and platoon sergeants per company, three squad leaders per platoon . . . and boys competed eagerly for the rank that would justify their being appointed to one of these positions of responsibility and authority. The higher a boy's rank, obviously, the higher the position he held, and it was a mark of honor for a dormitory to have the Battalion Commander or Adjutant within its ranks. In my first year, the "BC" was from my dorm.

Anti-war and anti-military sentiment was growing strong in the fall of 1967. I hailed from a part of New York City called Greenwich Village, well-known for its assortment of beatniks, artists, hipsters and others whom today we would lump together under the umbrella of "Alternative Lifestyle." As part of the orientation process included introductions (name and hometown), it wasn't long before a gaggle of old boys -- including some with all sorts of rank -- was swarming around me to see if somehow Carson Long had acquired a hippy. My answers to their questions might not have passed with flying colors, but another boy -- another New Yorker, in fact, but from Flushing - was far more vocal in his condemnation of the war, and he was soon doing pushups in penance.

Those first few weeks went by in a blur. We quickly learned to dress ourselves in our snappy new uniforms, to tuck our shirts in so that they looked sharp at all times, to tie a Windsor knot in our ties, and how to tuck our ties into our shirts when we weren't wearing an outer jacket ("blouse").. We learned quickly that what we considered a proper shoeshine -- that is, a few daubs of polish smeared on a shoe, buffed with a brush and then a cloth -- bore very little relation to the standard of shine required for Saturday inspection -- a time-consuming ritual known as "spit-shining" that left a mirror-like gloss on shoes.

We learned to wear caps outdoors at all times, and to remove them immediately upon entering a building. We learned to salute officers, but only the adults on the school's staff -- not the cadet officers. We learned to call the adults "Sir" or "Ma'am," and to deal with them respectfully. We learned how to use the old saw "Yes, sir; No, sir; No excuse, sir" to our advantage to take responsibility for our mistakes and explain those things that were beyond our control.

During the time I attended Carson Long, 1967 -- 1970, much of American society was experiencing upheavals, and schools weren't excluded. Teachers, especially in public schools, but even in many private schools, reported discipline problems significant enough to impede the learning process. At Carson Long, though, discipline in class was usually exceptional, and in the rare cases when a boy would get disruptive, the teacher had the option of exacting immediate punishment. At that time, they were permitted to paddle us, and some would call a boy up in front of the class and administer swats to him as he bent over the teacher's desk. These administrations of justice were rare, and happened early in the fall term -- a grim object lesson that usually ensured discipline for the rest of the year. (One teacher used a slim wooden yardstick to give swats, and if the mood struck him, he'd even give them to boys who hadn't done their homework!)

Another aspect of Carson Long that was likely far different from what most of our contemporaries were experiencing in public school was that we had a couple of hours of study hall every school night. Study time was about two and a half hours, and it was strictly enforced -- the adults in charge of the dormitories would act as proctors, making sure we were working with textbooks and not comic books. We could read literature but not escape reading. And letter-writing was absolutely forbidden during study hall.

Study hall was divided -- the first study hall was spent in the dorm's classroom, all the boys together, and second study hall was spent in our rooms with our doors open. After the first marking period, the boys on honor roll were permitted to be in their rooms for first study hall, and boys with two or more failing grades had to spend second study hall in the classroom.

There was a fifteen minute break between first and second study halls, and during this break, nearly all the boys would go to the cadet smoking room. Those with permission to smoke would light up a little cigar or pipe (cigarettes were forbidden as too feminine), and everyone would watch whatever channel the television was picking up that evening.

Smoking was pervasive in the late Sixties at Carson Long. You required parental permission to smoke, and you could only get your "smoking per" if you were 16 or older. The school was serious about underage smoking -- you could be placed on General Order for smoking without permission, and a GO was the second-worst punishment the school handed out. (The worst was expulsion.) More recently, smoking by cadets has been prohibited and the campus itself has been declared smoke-free.

Few boys have been expelled from Carson Long -- the school felt very strongly that nearly every boy was amenable to the sort of "character-building" instruction it provided, and by and large that feeling was confirmed. And while there may not be many Carson Long graduates walking the halls of Congress of running Fortune 500 corporations, the thirty to forty boys that graduate from Carson Long every year may be found in all walks of life, professional, vocational and especially military. They're solid citizens, they're hard-working members of society, they're husbands and fathers, and they're great Americans, one and all.

(Note: Carson Long recently commemorated a significant milestone in its long and proud history with the installation of COL Mathew J. Brown as President, replacing COL Carson E. R. Holman, who served as President since 1971. "Spike" Holman is a graduate of Carson Long, received his BS from West Point, and a Master's in Educational Supervision from Bucknell, and earned the respect of countless Carson Long boys (and their parents) over the years. The old boys of Carson Long salute him and his successor, also a West Point graduate (1979) and a veteran of service in the Middle East and the Pentagon. COL Brown also has graduate degrees from Indiana University and the US Army War College.)